


Magical ailments and their remedies

by BlueMonkey



Category: Warcraft (2016)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Eventual Happy Ending, It starts dark so so sorry!, Khadgar is cursed, M/M, Please Don't Hate Me, Porn With Plot, angry Khadgar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:26:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7307596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMonkey/pseuds/BlueMonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lothar distracts Khadgar in the middle of an arcane fight, Kadgar falls prey to a powerful curse. They have to work together if they want to stop Khadgar's life from ebbing away. But with a curse that tests their friendship to the limit, that is not going to be easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Goal? Write porn; relevant, magical porn with lots of character development. That's it.

Khadgar makes himself smaller in the back of the wagon.

No natural light reaches him, but he is glowing from all the spots on his body where his skin is thin. Blue energy seeps through the cartilage of his ears. It makes him look almost impish for anyone who doesn't know him. His nail beds are ridges, and the skin around his eyes glows. But the greatest source of light leaks from his eyes. More so than usual, they are hauntingly bright these days.

The blue that Khadgar emits bounces off his pallid skin. He looks at Lothar once helplessly and then averts his haze. If not for his light, Lothar would see the bags beneath his eyes. He might notice the fever that has crept into his limbs. Khadgar hasn't slept a good night's sleep in days. That this happens to the mage is all wrong.

Lothar doesn't have the time to see at the many changes Khadgar goes through, because the mage's healer regards him pointedly and closes the flap, cutting him off from anything more. If he thinks to protect the source of Khadgar's ailment, or how it is kept at bay—or even decorum—he is too late. They have traveled together long enough for Lothar to know.

He returns his focus on the road ahead. His warhorse walks a slow four-beat gait. Next to him, Khadgar's black gelding is keenly aware of its master's plight. Its ears are angled back, twitching from time to time; until Khadgar returns, the slightest surprise might set the horse off. Lothar takes the reins and creates more distance between the wagon pulled behind the third horse and them. With enough distance, he won't have to hear the sounds that his dear friend makes as he falls prey to the wretched curse once again.

A drizzle weighs down Lothar's hair and drips from his beard. With stilted patience, he leads on their small party.

Ten minutes later, Khadgar returns to his horse with a flush on his cheeks. The light from his eyes has faded now; it won't be back for another few hours. It is instead replaced by anger. “Did anything happen?” the boy asks, stating immediately that he doesn't want to talk about it.

Lothar ignores the beads of sweat and the exhaustion. “We should find a place to stay for the night soon,” replies he. “A few hours until nightfall, and I am certain this is not a good place.”

“I can ward the place.”

Lothar looks to the young mage. Defiance stares him in the face; it is more energy than Khadgar has shown all day.

“I can,” insists Khadgar. “Let me make myself useful.”

He is trying so hard that Lothar doesn't have it in himself to push back. The mage's magic is so volatile since he fell ill, especially in the minutes before he needs to be sapped, that the chance the ward would collapse on them and bring injury is too big. So Lothar chooses the option he does have. “I will hold the first watch.”

“Let me.”

“You need your rest.”

Khadgar's composure darkens. Something like black smoke creeps around his eyes, right under his skin, but when Lothar looks again, it is gone. “Don't you dare treat me like a child.”

Lothar snorts. Being responsible for this curse is a hard burden to carry, and it often drowns Lothar in sullen moods and a need to help his friend wherever he can. Most of the time, he is unsure which one of them two is more pissed off. But Khadgar is more than the child Lothar took him for when he first met him, and Khadgar is also not against putting Lothar in his place if he needs to.

If only Lothar would have listened once or twice, they would not be in this situation.

He inclines his head with a wry smile. “Whoever falls asleep first, loses.”

“Fair enough. I've been hoping to practice my sleeping spells.”

And Lothar knows he has lost that one.

* * *

Khadgar's breathing has picked up.

A grove of tall trees towers up around them. Up in the tree tops hoots an owl; several times, when they pay attention, they catch sight of a glowing wisp drifting through the thicket. This the safest place in the nearby area, and near a stream of fresh water. It is not the worst place to settle in for the night.

Khadgar dabs a piece of cloth into the bowl in front of him and presses the wet towel against his neck. As his malady is a magical one, anchored inside his body like a parasite as it continues to drain his energy while it stirs his control over his magic to greater and greater unpredictability, the water won't work. With his back against the tree, Khadgar mutters, “What is keeping him?”

The healer has been gone for some twenty minutes, and it ought not take so long to freshen up at the stream. A man of barely twenty years old, the healer is younger than Khadgar and horribly unskilled at magic. But that is not his purpose. As a healer, the man is to sap the boy when he needs sapping. It is a a personal process that ensures Khadgar's resentment towards his personal assistant, leading the healer to be highly uneasy all of the time.

“He will be back,” Lothar says over sharpening his knife. He tries not to stare at his companion; it is hard, when Khadgar licks his lips and furrows his brows with his neck exposed like that. His legs are rubbing against each other. Light has once again consumed his eyes.

Khadgar hates the affliction.

“We'll lift it,” promises he. “It is only a day more to Karazhan. We will find the cure, and then we will lift it.”

But he too is beginning to be disheartened. Where _is_ the blasted healer? Faster than it has before, Khadgar's situation worsens. Already he is shaking, and if Lothar may have imagined it before, he is now sure that he sees smoke crawling under the skin of the boy's bare wrists and along his neck. There is a pulse in them, a wicked worship of the body of a man too pure to be prey to such a thing.

Lothar gets up and snaps his fingers in front of him when the mage's limply head lolls back. “Boy.”

No response.

He hits Khadgar's cheek with the flat of his hand. When that doesn't give him anything, he does it again. “Hey. Wake up. Wake up, boy. It's not your time yet.” But all the while he curses the healer. If the man ever dares show his face again, Lothar will not be done with him soon.

Khadgar moans, and the hairs on Lothar's neck stand up. The smoke churns now. Blue energy pulses. Every now and then, it isn't blue but darker. Blacker. He cups his face and tries to grab Khadgar's attention. He is terrified; he can't lose him too. “Listen to me. Stay with me. Boy. Hey. Boy.”

The mage sinks to the forest floor. There, he twists into the most sickeningly impossible curve.

His body is still.

The light intensifies.

Like a container of an energy source beyond the capacity of the human body, Khadgar is being consumed by it. He fights so hard, but there will be nothing left of him, his own magic being turned against him from the inside. And the healer still hasn't come back.

Lothar doesn't want it. He doesn't want to do what he knows he has to.

Thrashing on a bed of grass with daisies and leaves scattered around him, it is too easy to imagine what Khadgar's funeral bier would look like. Lothar can't stand to watch.

Khadgar is slipping.

If Lothar doesn't act, he might as well have killed him with his own hands. Even that would be better than this. And so he purses his lips and looks away. His gloved hand searches the mage's body by touch.

Thinking of anything that is not the boy, Lothar rubs his palm with pressure between Khadgar's legs.

It is a mockery of something that ought to be intimate. Khadgar blazes back to life with a gasp. He has no control over himself when he seeks purchase and pushes his pelvis up against the hand. A rhythm of gasps and whimpers fills the quiet woods, the pulsing light of the unruly arcane waking up the sleeping forest.

Where the healer sapped Khadgar in a matter of minutes, this time it lasts tens. Lothar is not doing something right, but he is not an expert in black magic curses just like he doesn't know Khadgar's body and he just applies more pressure.

He understands the basics; release Khadgar fast enough and sate the curse. And the mage has been managing that just fine most of the time. The healer, being little more than a helping hand when Khadgar is no longer able to handle it himself, is a safety net.

But it has never hit Khadgar as fast as it did this night.

Lothar keeps his mind away from what he is doing. He doesn't compare sizes, nor does he listen to the wanton sounds that beg for more—he tries not to think of them as sounds of passion. “What do I do?” he hisses when the end just does not seem to come.

" _Lothar_? What are y—oh, by the Light, _help me_."

“How?”

“You know how!”

They aren't looking at each other. Lothar is conflicted. Although he no longer underestimates the boy who looked so hopelessly like a green leaf in the barracks where they first met, he can't help but want to protect him. Be proud of him. All the things, he thinks, that sound like family. And yet his hand moves on its own accord, quite curious after the responses Khadgar gives him; the sound of lips being licked and breaths being sucked, and an undulating body under Lothar's command.

He knows how. Of course he does. “Look away.”

Khadgar is so glad to comply that it hurts. He twists his body around to grasp the floor with his hands and bite his teeth into his knuckles. Magic spills into the ground in a corona around them.

And Lothar's hand pushes past the tunic and into his trousers. Even gloved, it doesn't leave much to the imagination when he wraps it around Khadgar's cock and tugs it experimentally—and neither does Khadgar, who grunts in reply and thrusts into it.

They settle into a clumsy rhythm. Lothar tries not to twist his arm wrongly while he faces away from the body on the ground. And Khadgar has no clue what he is doing. Degraded to a wholly instinctive creature, he takes whatever is up for offering if it brings him closer. One particular jerk, Lothar has no choice but to rearrange himself or break his arm. “Hey,” he almost laughs, so uneasy is he, “kid.”

The word is another painful mistake in a line of many.

Khadgar's energy is pooling. Rivulets of it run up his neck. Where they traverse his tangled hair, they turn black or evaporate. He hides his face against his own hands while he pants, bites his lips, keens.

Is it just Lothar, or are there new sounds just for him?

Lothar stops going to lengths to look away. It is impossible, anyway. Khadgar's body is building up to something, and Lothar has never seen it look so powerful. He has never known the mage to even be able to hold it. No expert in the arcane, Lothar has always assumed mages to be channels for some mystical power from the aether. Instead this seems decidedly like Khadgar himself generates it. All of it.

A muffled cry against the back of his wrist, and a cloak of black smoke suddenly bursts from Khadgar's being. It twists itself into shapes and creatures, and then the smoke turns into a silvery white.

It is the curse. Both beautiful and ugly, it coils up into the trees. Lothar stares after it. Khadgar is panting on the ground, and Lothar has pulled back his hand as soon as his job was done. He doesn't know whether to hope that this time, it is truly gone.

“Hey,” he asks, “are you all right?”

Khadgar does not say anything back. He crawls up, more invigorated than he has been for the last hour, and closes his eyes in bitterness when the smoke just sinks into his body again. “I am taking a bath.”

Khadgar needs no protection now. If he did, he would still not accept it. Lothar is left alone in the copse in an overflowing sense of guilt. He tries to clean the glove by rubbing it against grass, then with sand.

Just one more day to Karazhan, he tells himself. He himself doesn't know how to go about that if the healer doesn't return, when it's just the two of them. Lothar promised Khadgar a cure and he will do what he can to help him find it. But he doesn't think it is going to be a pleasant journey.


	2. A Good-bye

As some stories go, it starts with a good-bye.

Wind whips their hair into disarray and sends their cloaks billowing. On the terrace, a storm is rising. Autumn has finally come, and this one forebodes a fell winter heralded in by bright red and orange leaves. Lothar pulls his winter cloak tighter around him. The battle armour doesn't stop the cold much.

Khadgar, slight in build—relative, Lothar supposes, to the men whom he usually spends his days with—has only his woollen cloak and very few layers to protect him from the cold, but the cold doesn't seem to touch him. In its stead, he radiates a glow. For someone who is finally going back to the mage tower he has been pleading for with the Queen for weeks, he is buoyant with energy.

“Will you be all right?” Lothar asks.

Khadgar chuckles. “Karazhan is only the biggest arcane library in the world.” And he visibly loves the idea of it. Of course he will be all right.

“Until you conjure up something you can't control,” says Lothar. But Lothar has spent too long mourning his son, his king, and the betrayal of a friend, and tries not to be bitter about this good-bye. It won't be a final good-bye. Khadgar will be back, and so will he. “Don't be a stranger. Come visit Stormwind some time.”

“Or you Karazhan,” Khadgar smiles. “Tell the Queen I…” He awkwardly trails off.

And Lothar knows what he means to say. Already his gryphon is waiting at the end of the terrace to take him up into the air. That Khadgar is here and not already in Karazhan is because he is accompanying Lothar to his own departure first. It is the hour when the rest of the world doesn't even think of waking up, but already an unrest in the South requires Lothar's attention; if not for the sudden call, Khadgar might have already left. “Don't worry, boy. She understands why you're sneaking out.”

Khadgar's head snaps up. “Sneaking out?”

“Is it not what you're doing?”

But Lothar doesn't mind. Khadgar is not one for good-byes; he tends to get teary and drag out the time, but he also doesn't like anyone seeing him like that. Perhaps the boy feels that it makes him look weak. Lothar rather thinks of it as one of Khadgar's many traits that show compassion. That he cares. Either way, Khadgar prefers to leave when nobody is watching.

“Right,” mumbles the mage. And here they are, at another good-bye. Khadgar looks away as he grasps for words.

Lothar clasps his shoulder. “Go.” He offers a smile, a nod of his head, and walks past Khadgar. He wants to look back—Lothar is not half decent with good-byes himself—but for the sake of his friend, he does not. Instead he mounts the gryphon, checks his footing, and pats his mount to take off.

When he does turn his eyes back to the terrace, high up and circling the castle, he sees a bubble of blue light. Then it zaps out.

His friend has gone far away.

* * *

It is war that occupies Lothar in the months to come. From answering a distress call, he falls into campaigns and ambushes, all to making sure that his sister and his young liege will remain safely away from the horrors of the battlefield.

Lothar fights like a lion. Several new scars point out the places on his body where close combat has almost brought his life to an early end. The battles are vicious and they are gritty, and the ground is entrenched with blood. He has seen enough crows picking out the entrails of men he fought alongside with. More than once, he finds himself glad not to have the mage with him. War is no place for civilised men.

Of course, more often than that, Lothar wishes for the reverse.

One time, he gets his wish granted.

Lothar's men have been backed against a towering rock plateau. It is raining, they can barely see a thing, and a pack of Orcs have closed them in. They can hear their grunts from behind the curtain of rain. War cries sing of either slaughter or the promise of a valiant death; neither appeal to Lothar, whose only intent is to protect. His troops have no way of making it out of that dead end without sustaining considerable losses.

He prays for a miracle, and just when he thinks the orc pack is at hand, thunder erupts from the ground. The same spell that Medivh once used, that once cut Lothar's son off from him, cuts them an impenetrable barrier. But it doesn't shut anyone out. One by one, men disappear from inside the semicircle. A familiar blue clings to where they used to be. Then, last of all men, it is him.

The rain has stopped. And he stands face to face with a panting mage, who smiles at him. “Lothar.”

He doesn't conceal how good it is to see his friend. Mindful of his filthy armour, Lothar clasps Khadgar's elbow in a shake that the boy seems unfamiliar with but tries to reciprocate. “Book worm.”

Around them, men shift uncomfortably at the title. It's not something to call the man who single-handedly saved each of their lives. Khadgar too flushes with embarrassment. “You know, they call me Guardian these days.”

The nod Lothar gives in return looks more like a curtsey.

Khadgar is still the best thing that has happened to him for a while.

“I couldn't come up with something better fast,” Khadgar apologises as they walk down the hill. “Sorry.” He is worn out and he seems parched. Clearly he hasn't considered his own health while funnelling the thunderstorm that saved his soldiers.

At first Lothar doesn't understand why Khadgar would apologise. Then he does. He does it for Callan. On the battlefield, beleaguered by an ambush of Fel-touched orcs—the similarities are legion. For a moment, Lothar loses himself to the by now so familiar sensation of grief. Then he is distracted by something else. It had taken all of Medivh's strength to cast that spell. Years of study, and still that spell took him out. But Khadgar, who is nothing short of a miracle hidden under that boyish façade, still walks. Saved them all. Teleported then to the Light knows where, but saved them all.

“I'm proud of you,” he says.

No matter how tired he is, Khadgar blooms up.

* * *

When night falls, the party still hasn't figured out their location. Khadgar, who is surprisingly unacquainted with maps, points to a mountain range in the North before spinning and, with more doubt, stretching a finger towards the West.

“I don't know,” he admits. Lothar can tell that the boy is frustrated with himself; he vows under his breath to patch up his geography knowledge as soon as he returns to Karazhan. If he gets enough time for it, he mutters as an afterthought.

“Try sleeping once in a while,” Lothar suggests.

“I try, but I get interrupted.”

Now Lothar studies him with interest—also, not a small bit of respect. “You've got company? I thought something like that was against the rules with the Kirin Tor.” He tries to picture Khadgar with a girl, and the image is wrong no matter whom Lothar puts next to him in his mind. Huh. Maybe a man. But no, that doesn't change it.

Maybe it is the library setting that bothers Lothar. But no, a library would not stop the Lion if he was in company and in the mood, himself. The cold fact that he hasn't had a soul mate for a long time now; now there is a thing that might. He lets the thought go.

“I meant you,” Khadgar says matter-of-factly. “You and your men. You keep getting yourself into trouble. I'm the Guardian and it's my task to guard you, but do you really have to keep getting yourself into fights?”

“I'm a warrior,” Lothar laughs, “that's what we do. Have you been scrying on us?”

“Only when I have the time,” shrugs Khadgar. He has a book open on his lap even now, perched against the solid trunk of an old tree while some of the other men make camp. He doesn't let on, but the spell has exhausted him.

He also looks, Lothar thinks, like exhaustion is nothing new to him.

“What else exactly has been keeping you busy?” he wants to know.

But Khadgar shakes it off with an apologetic smile. He stirs the air and, without intending it, a ward starts to form. When he sees it, he quickly stops and casts his gaze down. It is strange even for him. He closes the book with a sigh. Lothar can't read the runes at the spine, but the book itself is black, spindly and menacing; it is impossibly a pleasant subject.

“There have been things,” Khadgar starts. “Something is going on with the tower. I have yet to find out what it is.”

“Things?”

“Strange things. Spiders, many of them. I sleep on a bed suspended on the air these days. The logistics of keeping that up are, ah, problematic. You'd have t—but I'm sure you're not interested in that. But sometimes, when I'm not watching, I think I feel something. Like a,” he tries to pinpoint the sensation, “like a presence.”

That alarms Lothar. “The Fel?”

Khadgar frowns. “No. Or maybe, I don't know. So many things are going on, and it's hard enough to get time in to study. I really don't know enough yet, Lothar. If Karazhan is to become a place to study, I have to get rid of that presence. It bothers me night and day.”

The words instil more fear in Lothar than the orcs can.

“The Fel is not in me,” Khadgar assures him.

“What if—”

“It's not.” About this, Khadgar is resolute. “There are so many wards against the Fel around me. It's not possible. I—” and he flushes, “I performed Medivh's spell on myself. The one from Elwynn Forest. If there was Fel in me, that would have killed me.”

It is incredibly reckless. Lothar stares at him for a good minute. To imagine the boy actually casting a spell on himself that could have taken his life; to think that weeks would have passed before his body would have been found. Lothar prefers a Khadgar with Fel over a dead one, Stormwind's safety be damned. But Stormwind is exactly why Khadgar might have cast that spell in the first place. “Don't ever do that again,” he says lowly. He isn't ready to lose another friend.

Khadgar smiles ruefully. “I got myself so drunk that night. The wine in the cellars was awful, and the headache more so. No, I won't do it again.”

That puts Lothar back at ease. Khadgar not handling his liquor means that at least something is right in the world. He passes a slice of apple from the edge of his knife. “Don't go back there tonight.”

“If you don't mind it,” says Khadgar as he suppresses a yawn. He chews off a small chunk. “But I would really like a roof over my head and a bed under me, if someone can make that happen.”

Lothar vows that as soon as the campaign is over, he will petition with his sister to get at least a place for Khadgar in the castle where the mage can sleep and regain his strength. But tonight, he arranges the biggest tent and the softest furs, and he would have ignored anyone who protested his decisions, but all of his men feel the same way about their Guardian.

And so Khadgar sleeps like a queen and eats a breakfast fit for kings.

When he draws up his bubble to port himself to Karazhan, Lothar is sure he will see him again soon. Karazhan's hostility disturbs him more than he lets on, and he will make sure that Khadgar is not facing that threat alone. Of course, he does not tell Khadgar that; Khadgar would only try to keep him out.

He nods in gratitude. Khadgar smiles back, and then he is gone.

There is no need for good-byes that morning.


	3. Shadows in Karazhan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had a long weekend in London and ended up writing three chapters...

Thick is the layer of snow that covers Stormwind like a white fluffy blanket. With the days of Yule approaching, branches of mistletoe hang from every door post in the streets. Up in their towers, the bells toll merry songs several times a day.

For Lothar, it used to be the season of warming wine and of spending time with his family and friends; the only time when he allowed them to pressure him into otherwise embarrassing tunics. Needless to say, Yule does not hold the same charm for him this year.

He is not back a day before he formally requests his leave.

“One day,” bargains the Queen. “Stay for one day. The people want you to make an appearance, Anduin. They want to see you. They also want to feel safe. What will I tell them, if you go off on another mission so soon?” She tips her head. “I know there is no stopping you. There never is. Stay for one day, if only to get some sleep, and leave well rested in the morning.”

She has offered his troops the use of the baths upon their return. Lady Taria has presented it like a gift from Stormwind to its heroes, instead of the necessity that it was, and it is the only reason Lothar is somewhat presentable now, standing before her in her domain of the throne room. Already his battered armour has been divested of him and sent to the workshop for repairs; no doubt serving to further complicate leaving too soon.

Lothar regrets sending his sister a raven to inform her about Khadgar's plight.

Taria sighs. “For me then, Anduin. I understand, and I share your concerns. The Guardian is very dear to all of us. But rushing into another fight when you've barely recovered is going to do neither you nor him any good.”

As always, her logic is infallible. Except Lothar does not want to sleep. He has skewered orc gut upon his sword and been a fury of steel to quicken his return. Certainly, Khadgar can handle the menace that haunts Karazhan for a night longer. His magic is a force to be reckoned with. But Lothar is a fool if he pretends to feel secure until he knows for sure. “Very well,” he allows grudgingly. “Tomorrow.”

“I ask for no more,” smiles his sister.

Lothar squints his eyes. “But you want to.”

And she laughs. She does; she has always been bad at keeping things from him. “Tonight is the Yule Ball. If you can, I am sure Stormwind would like to properly celebrate the return of its Lion. And Varian would appreciate it. Only as long, of course, as your sleep can spare.”

And so Lady Taria uses his men and his nephew to coerce him into a night of festivities that Lothar has trouble giving into. For a while, he drinks and tries to forget all that he has seen in battle. Never quite succeeding, his men still join him gladly. They waste themselves in laughter and drunken stupors that Lothar can't deny them, even if he can now no longer ask them to come with him. His men need the merriment to soothe the deeper wounds.

At the first light of dawn, his gryphon pulls away unaccompanied from the terrace and screeches in delight to once again be airborne.

* * *

A ray of condensed light bursts from the top of the tower, and tops off another floor from already damaged Karazhan.

The beam nearly slices a toe off Lothar's left foot mid-air in his descent for the platform. It are his gryphon's reflexes that keep him in one piece, but Lothar can't feel relief. Not when the energy in the aftermath prickles his skin and the tower remains dreadfully silent for far too long after the light dies out.

As much as he wants to take the shortcut, he doesn't land through the new fissure in the roof. What he will find is unknown to him, and recklessness might cost him his head. That does entail having to run up all the flights of the winding stairs, exhausting himself while he hurries to an unknown scene.

Books in the library have been haphazardly flung about. There are large burns on some of the book cabinets. Something smoulders just outside his vision. In his expectations, Lothar has not considered Karazhan to be so badly off. More disturbing is that Khadgar has allowed it to get this far.

Up in the tower flashes crackling lightning. A second later, thunder splits the air.

By the time Lothar thinks to stay way from the magic duel—what is happening seems to be far out of his league—he reaches the end of the stairs and catches sight of the full scene.

Large shadows are creeping up against what is left of Karazhan's walls. Where there are gaps, he witnesses something black and not wholly opaque. A thick tar-like substance drips from wherever the shades touch matter. They grasp madly at a man-sized condensation of Light in the center of the room. Whenever a shade touches it, it recoils as if burnt. But it never stays away for long.

Verbal arcane components stack in combination upon combination. Once or twice, Lothar catches a word that he understands. More often than not, the language is like gibberish to his ears. Their source are the singularity in the center. Khadgar, Lothar presumes.

But barely holding on.

It is so much worse than he imagined.

White lassoes whip out from the Light. A corona of gold bursts from the mage, then a sound oddly like a distant bell, as he works to drive the shadows back. And slowly but surely, he is succeeding. Khadgar appears stronger than he was a minute ago. Replenished. No longer are the shadows so solid when Khadgar casts a new spell that multiplies his appearance into five different copies across the room. The shades turn to attack each copy and give the original the time to prepare his next assault.

But Khadgar is also weakening. He has been doing this for so long. Lothar curses himself for not coming here sooner, when a last dark shadow creeps up behind the mage, unseen, and readies itself to strike.

“Khadgar!” Lothar tries to warn him.

Khadgar would have noticed the shade on his own. The black shape comes to a halt against a barrier that flashes blue only a moment after Lothar has called. Khadgar would have handled it; were it not that he is suddenly made aware of his audience. His concentration flickers, the barrier and all of his other guards zap out, and the shadow takes advantage of it.

It skewers his back and then disappears in its entirety as it takes ownership of the mage. The light that Khadgar emitted now extinguishes, and Lothar feels sick. He watches helplessly as Khadgar cries out. It is such a horrid playback of when he lost his only son that for a moment it has him paralysed. Khadgar topples forward in a nasty crunching sound, and then is silent.

Peace returns to the tower.

Lothar grips his sword as he runs to the prone shape. Anything out of the ordinary, he is ready to lash out against. But Khadgar is in one piece. No blood marks the spot the shadow went through him. Neither is there smoke, nor any other form of damage.

Lothar pushes the mage on his back and examines him. “Boy?” He is afraid to speak. This is his fault. Had he shut up, the shade would not have been able to penetrate the shield. The shades had rather seemed to be on the losing side before his interference. And Lothar messed it up. The latest in a line of people who got hurt because of his failures, Lothar doesn't want to think that the boy—

On the cracked floor, Khadgar groans and opens his eyes. “…Lothar? What are you doing here?”

It is decided on the spot. “I am getting you out of here.”

“What? No! I can't go. It's not—” And Lothar knows the exact moment Khadgar remembers what has happened. His brown eyes, already naturally big, grow large. “Where is it? What happened to it?”

Lothar is afraid to answer.

“Did you see it?” insists Khadgar.

“How do you feel?” Lothar asks him.

“I'm fine.” Frustration lines Khadgar's features. “Go, now. You shouldn't be here. It's not safe, and it'll be back. You can't be here when it—” He slows down. “What did you see?”

“I won't leave you here. This is not a discussion.”

“Lothar.”

He doesn't want to say it. He really doesn't. Bile rises in the back of his throat, and Lothar knows that Khadgar has noticed his reluctance. “It went through you,” he whispers. “But you're fine. I am sure it is fine. I will take you to the priests of Stormwind.”

“Through me?” Khadgar pales. He stares up at Lothar. “In me?”

The change happens before Lothar's eyes. First Khadgar grasps at his body in a growing desperation. He checks whether nothing is out of the ordinary. His eyes faintly light up as his search continues at a supernatural level. And then, when he has asserted that he is indeed fine—when he sees the soot on the ground below him, black tar that resembles the residue of a fire or of lightning being grounded—he grows angry, struggles up to a sitting position and dusts himself off. “It will come back. Please let me handle this on my own.” _I don't want you in danger,_ it says. _I can't worry about you too._

“And how long have you been doing that?” counters Lothar. Because Khadgar is not okay. There are bags under his eyes, and his skin is sallow. Only his magic seems to keep him together. For all that Karazhan surpasses what he wants in a library, it is turning into a nightmare. “You take whatever books you need,” says Lothar, because he understands by now what makes the mage tick, “and you come to Stormwind. See the priests.” _Indulge me_ , he means; he is not at all sure that a shade entering the young Guardian is a normal thing, and Khadgar sitting unharmed on the ground does nothing to absolve Lothar of his worry.

Nor, for that matter, his guilt.

To his relief, Khadgar gives in.


	4. Brittle

Although they both leave the tower at the same time, They both take a considerably different time to return to the city.

Lothar, who goes by gryphon, is subjected to the weather and the wind. He goes as fast as he can, but his mount is a physical being and has to adhere to physical laws and the elements. She has to go around the blizzard building in the West.

The battle with the shade has drained enough of Khadgar's energy for him to unwisely exhaust what is left on a portal. So for all intents and purposes, Khadgar should have been in the front seat on the gryphon's back. Should have, if the gryphon had not unexpectedly started thrashing as soon as the mage came too close. Even Lothar's attempts at soothing her did not pacify the angry snaps and the bristling snorts, leaving Khadgar—who had flown the same beast without a hassle before—visibly upset by being denied.

And so when Lothar returns, he means to find his sister and confirm whether Khadgar's fickle attempt at a portal has indeed delivered the boy to Stormwind safe and sound.

But Khadgar already waits for him from the entrance to the stables. He is gladly still in one piece, leaning against a post as he keeps a safe distance from the mount. “In a hurry?” he wants to know.

Lothar is not. Not any more. He gives Khadgar a radiant smile and inclines his head. “Boy.” They are both safe and they are both here, and that is what matters. Here are no orcs, and certainly no sinister shades from the bowels of Karazhan.

“You're awfully happy,” chuckles Khadgar, “considering that the Queen sent me to collect you.”

Lothar scowls. “Really?”

“I am afraid so.”

The boy is his usually cheerful self, and Lothar does not need to ask about how he fares. Khadgar seems a bit exhausted still, but the healthy smile is as infectious as it was when they first met and when Lothar still attempted to be annoyed with him. “Tell her I shall take a bath first.”

“Of course.”

Khadgar follows him into the castle. He casts a glance over his shoulders at the gryphon one last time. The creature snorts angrily. Khadgar nervously returns to Lothar's side.

They pass the gates and their sentries. Yule has ended, but the city is as white as when Lothar left it. It is cooler though—not that Khadgar wears anything more than his usual garb. With his blues, he is a lone figure of colour among white pelts and brown leather, and he stands out in a way that unexpectedly suits him.

“I'm glad you left that tower,” Lothar admits when he walks up to his own quarters with Khadgar on his tail. “You look better.”

“Hm.” Khadgar coughs. “I went back a few times.”

And the words should not come as a surprise. Except they do, and they pack a punch.

“Don't worry,” adds the mage quickly. “I didn't go alone. Stormwind's library is a lot bigger now, and Karazhan's fully empty. There is no reason for me to go there any more. Actually,” he admits, “I don't think I could even if I wanted to.”

The Lion stops. “What do you mean?”

“Need to recharge,” Khadgar says with his hands in his pockets, like it is a normal thing. Maybe for mages it is. “So guess who is staying in Stormwind for a few months?”

And that is good.

* * *

With Lothar's return come his responsibilities.

Lothar gets two days off to recover, in which he tries not to disturb Khadgar in his studies, nor his sister when she governs the future king. A proud uncle and a glad friend, he fails at both—and he tries to make up for it by being extra hard on the new recruits.

Of course, Khadgar once again holes himself up amidst stacks of books. He pushes himself harder in the castle library every day. At the dinner table on the second night, he demonstrates his most recent study of the element of frost by conjuring up ice flowers for Prince Varian.

The third night, Prince Varian asks him for a vine of snow bells, which should be child's play for Khadgar by now, and the magic just fizzles out.

“Oh,” he stammers, disappointed, “I'm sorry.”

“Did you study hard today?” Lady Taria asks with encouragement as she offers him a hook for an excuse.

But Khadgar's brows furrow. “I copied a few passages.”

Lothar exchanges a glance with his sister.

Khadgar tries again with deeper focus.

The light in his eyes flickers out. A powder of half-formed ice erupts from his hands, solidifies, and harpoons through the solid wooden table with a loud crack. Khadgar's body falls over the table with a nauseatingly jointless thud.

Lothar is up over the table at once. He tugs his friend up and tries to pat him back into consciousness. But Khadgar feels hot to the touch. His skin is oily and abnormally sweaty. What is worse is the rasping breath. The boy's body curls into every touch.

“Priest!” Lothar calls out. “I need a priest!”

Khadgar has not mentioned going to see one. Lothar is certain now that the man never has visited the temple like he promised he would. Lothar lifts him up with too much ease.

Lady Taria, who covers up her shock fast, nods.

Then they are gone. Down the halls and out into the cold, people stand to watch the Lion and the feverish body of their powerful Guardian. Lothar wishes he was invisible; he has neither the time nor the patience for any of the people that fidget about Khadgar's health. This would have been much easier if he had magic. But that is what Khadgar is for.

The trembling body is placed into the font at once. Men pry the two apart and ask Lothar to wait outside. Eventually, they ask him to go home. The last thing Lothar sees before the doors close are three men gathering around the boy and talking furiously to one another.

Because he doesn't know what to do, he drinks that night. The alcohol does not make him forget about the memory of the lifeless body slumping in his arms, so uncharacteristic of naturally lively Khadgar; it certainly does not hide from the rest of Stormwind that the Lion is human after all. And come morning, all of the city knows that something is amiss with the Guardian.

Lothar raps at the same doors that have been closed on him the night before. Snow clings to his cloak.

“Is there news?” asks he. “Is he all right?”

The eldest regards him solemnly. “I request an audience with Her Highness.”

Lothar waves his hand about. “You have it.” He ignores the responding look that questions whether he is really allowed to give away the Queen's time that freely. Nevertheless, the priest inclines his head and asks to lead the way. And so it must not be something that can wait.

When the word is out, Lothar is at once sober and in need of a few more rounds of ale. His body sinks deeper into his seat.

“The Guardian has been cursed.”

Silence settles in the court.

“What kind of curse?” asks Lady Taria.

The priest folds his hands.

So comes out the truth of Khadgar's affliction. So, Lothar learns how Khadgar's magic has been twisted into something unpredictable, at best, to out of control at the worst of times. He learns that Khadgar has to stay with the priests until they come up with a solution, as they are the only people capable of containing him—as well as his magic—when he loses control.

The priest also explains that although they can slow down the deterioration of Khadgar's arcane energy, Khadgar's situation will keep getting worse until, at one point, too much damage will have been done.

Once that happens, Khadgar can't be anywhere where there are people.

Once that happens, he will die.

The priest is very careful when he addresses the inescapable outcome. He trains his eyes on the Queen and avoids Lothar's mortification. “Consumed by magic,” are his exact words.

“There must be something we can do?” Lady Taria asks what Lothar wants to but cannot twist his tongue around.

“Perhaps. We don't know. It is a very rare case, and very poorly documented. The Guardian will be able to go about his life if he does not use magic, but every few days, he will need someone to treat him. Drain the excess, if you will.”

“And if he does use magic?” asks Lothar. Khadgar stripped from his natural magic is an inhuman rule to impose upon the boy.

“He would not be able to control it. There is a small window after he has been treated when something of the sort might be possible, but I am sorry, the Guardian is unfit to continue his duties while this curse is in him. Karazhan, we think, may give us answers. To track down its source and defeat it. But that is, I'm afraid, speculation. And even if it were so, it can not be done. None of us are strong enough.”

“But he is. What if we take Khadgar?” A plan is already brewing in Lothar's head. The headache from a night of alcohol is a constant drone while he goes over the logistics, but he is desperate for an answer; the headache, in that regard, is inconsequential. “We take him to Karazhan.”

“Brother,” begins Taria. She exchanges a look with the priest, who casts his eyes down and shakes his head minimally. “How long does he have?”

Now the priest whispers, and the hall quiets. “If we don't find a cure, then I expect a few months.”

Lothar's sight blurs with unspilled tears. Whether powerlessness or frustration—maybe both—he swallows past the lump in his throat. He will do everything he can, he vows, to right his wrong. He just does not know if he can. “Can I visit him?”

“No.”

“You will let me see him,” Lothar threatens now, his voice low. No priest is going to hold him back from his friend.

Taria turns. “Anduin!”

But the priest holds up his hand and shakes his head. “You misunderstand. The Guardian may go where he pleases, as long as one of us stays with him for his safety. We are a temple, not a prison. The Lion cannot see him, because it is the Guardian's specific request that he stay away.”

The ramifications take a minute to sink in.

Lothar feels his grip slipping. All he still holds dear in life, he has spoiled. Khadgar was supposed to be stronger. He was supposed to break the cycle of death that surrounds Lothar. Lothar has fought so hard to keep him safe, even when Khadgar was ten times stronger and did not need his protection. But now Khadgar too pays the price.

Of course Khadgar doesn't want to see him.

Lothar gets up and leaves.


	5. Something Black

Much unlike what his sister fears and those in his garrison expect from him, Lothar stays away from the taverns in the days that follow the priest's words. If he passes the temple more frequently in hopes of catching a glimpse of his friend, no one mentions it. Instead his time is spent in the library.

Khadgar has brought back a massive collection from Karazhan. The books stacked against a wall of the overly full library halls contain more mysteries than a man can grasp at in his lifetime—let alone learn to read. So Lothar enlists the help of two mages.

They regard him with caution at first. Warriors and mages do not mingle. They compliment each other wonderfully on the battlefield, but their lives are so different that there is little common ground for friendship. And Lothar, who feels threatened more than once when surrounded by such incomprehensible power, does his best not to show it. His first visit to a mage tower becomes the talk of the town. Yet he does not need to worry; once he tells of Khadgar's plight, two of them visit the Guardian, come back from the temple tight-lipped, and proceed to help Lothar industriously.

“Anduin,” Lady Taria coaxes him awake late at night. “Go to bed.”

He finds himself in the library once again; an imprint of wood marks where he laid his head to rest and fell asleep. The candle next to him has a scant few minutes left.

He rubs his face. “What time is it?”

She smiles. “Late enough. Come. Fight again tomorrow.” She means well, and she cares so much. At the same time, Lothar can see her sadness.

The shadows behind her undisclose a shuffle of feet. Lady Taria looks over her shoulder once. Then she rests her hand on her brother's shoulder, waits until he squeezes it in reply, and leaves him alone for as long as the candle will let him continue.

“To tell you the truth, I didn't believe it when they said that you have been reading like a scholar.”

Lothar is instantly awake.

Khadgar appears from the dark to sit opposite Lothar. He doesn't look like he has been wasting away. Freshly bathed and wearing a set of uncharacteristic purple and silver robes that nevertheless suit him, Khadgar offers a nod. “I had to see it for myself. They didn't lie. Well met, Lothar.”

“Boy.” And Lothar doesn't quite know what else to say. He has expected not to see the mage again until it was on a funeral, and he tries not to wear his surprise and relief too visibly.

Their knees touch under the table. They both sit back. “I am going back to Karazhan.”

“I thought you didn't want to see me.”

“I don't want you to see me.”

Lothar rolls his eyes. “So?”

“It's not the same thing.”

Lothar goes over the two sentences again, frowns and rubs his eyes roughly. His lack of sleep must be obvious, but all it does is make Khadgar laugh. And that gives Lothar hope. “Why are you telling me this?”

Now Khadgar sobers. The flame of the candle hides half of his appearance in the privacy of the midnight library. “Because I don't expect I will see you again.”

Then this is a good-bye.

“You don't know me very well, do you?”

“Excuse me?”

Lothar intended a light jab. Because he is not about to give up; of course he is not. It was never a question for Lothar to take a step back, when it concerns the safety of a friend. Instead Khadgar seems genuinely offended. Lothar's face becomes serious. “I am coming with you.”

“You can't,” says Khadgar.

“And why, pray tell, not?”

“I do not want you to come.”

Lothar practically growls. “You need me. The priests told me, Khadgar. You can't use magic. You can't just teleport there, and if by some luck of fate you may be able to, you'll never make it back. It is a suicide mission. That tower is bad news.”

It is the first time he addresses the mage by his name; whether because of that or because of the anger, Khadgar's eyes start to glow and his breathing hitches. “I said I don't _want_ you there.”

“And I don't want you to die,” growls back Lothar. Not about to give in to this lunacy, he leans over the table, one balled fist covering an illustration of flowers. He knows he should not be aggravating the boy, but he can't help it. He has done his utmost best to make up for causing Khadgar to be cursed.

On top of that, it feels too much like his friendship is being rejected.

“This was a bad idea,” mutters the boy. “I should not have come here.”

“No, you should have gone right ahead and gotten yourself killed.” Rage and frustration war for dominance in the sacred silence among the books. “I am coming, and that's the end of the—what's the matter?”

For Khadgar is breathing hard now. He can barely hold his anger with an intensity that Lothar is only familiar with from when Khadgar killed the demon in Medivh; but it is not just arcane might he senses. Something black curls up from the boy's skin into the shadows behind him. His eyes are white hot, and his chest rises and falls like a man possessed.

And Lothar wishes he had kept his mouth shut. He presses his hand to Khadgar's forehead. “Hey,” he tries. “Do not do this to me. _Khadgar_.”

Then hands are prying Khadgar back. An angry priest throws a vicious glare at him. “Out,” he says stonily.

He must have been with them all along, his jaw made of steel. The priest pulls the mage up to his feet with an ease that belies his slender form and ushers him away.

Lothar sees just enough to know that Khadgar has lost consciousness.

* * *

The cart leaves Stormwind before dawn. Hushed and without fanfare, it uses the anonymity of the hour before dawn—before people wake and the news spreads—to make sure that the Guardian is on his way to Karazhan on his last trip.

There is one priest. He is a novice, only a healer, but enough to serve his purpose. And then there are two men from the Queen's guard; by all means it is only a minor expedition. Rain pelts down on cobblestone as the party crosses the gate and ventures onto the road for a three day, likely one-way trip; one that could be much faster if not for the fact that they transport a powerful mage with a dangerous lack of self-control.

Khadgar rides his own horse when he can. He does not stop to give the city a last good-bye. He could not bear that.

Half an hour in, one of the horses whinnies, and a painfully familiar stallion falls into step with his gelding. The mage turns, and Lothar inclines his head at him. There is a twinkle in his eyes. “Good morning.”

Khadgar's horse comes to a sudden stop. The rest of the party follows suit. “Go back.”

Lothar smiles. “No.”

“Lothar.”

“Did you really think I wouldn't notice you taking two of my men?”

“They were given to me by the Queen.”

“Who is my sister.” Lothar looks at him exasperated. “I am not here to aggravate you. Just, let me help. I will stay out of your way if my presence bothers you,” and since that episode last night, Lothar has no doubt that it does. “But I also ask that you consider that it is not in my nature to do nothing.”

Khadgar is ready to protest, and the young healer in their party certainly keeps throwing Lothar distrustful looks. But Lothar joins the warriors at the front and stays true to his word. He does not bother Khadgar for the rest of the day. At the campfire that night, he finds a place away from the fire to have his rations in only his own company. He says it is because he suspects that they are being followed, and it is not an excuse—there have been signs of something tailing the party—but it still sounds like one.

He observes the mage. There are small hints as to how Khadgar has changed. Barely there for everyone but for the people who know him, he is different. Khadgar is increasingly easy to anger by seemingly insignificant things. The curse, then, does not only make his magic volatile.

Khadgar grows pale minutes before he starts heaving for breath. Just when Lothar wants to do something to help, as worried as watching the mage has made him, Khadgar gets up disappears into the wagon. The young healer follows, and the curtains draw shut.

Lothar watches attentively, while his two guards shift with unease. He does not understand why, at first. But that does not take long.

Familiar blue light starts coming out through the seams of the leather wagon hood. Then, wisps of black smoke. But all of that is still nothing compared to the sound.

Whimpers.

They are increasing in volume. Then come groans. Desperate and yet less and less innocent, Lothar's eye catches that of one of the guards. “What is going on?”

“The Guardian, Sir,” whispers the older. “It is his treatment.”

“What is the nature of it? I've not heard of a treatment like this before.”

The younger bites his lip. “They call it sapping him, Sir. His magic builds up until it is too much for him to control. Then the healer saps him, and the Guardian will be able to continue for a while.”

They talk like it is a taboo—and that it is one that they do not expect Lothar to be unaware of; their eyes keep shifting as they talk.

But Lothar sits forward. At least they are answers. “Sapped? How?”

A muffled cry erupts from the wagon. The light fades and the smoke draws back, and when the healer comes out, he does not meet anyone's eyes.

The guards too avert their eyes. And then comes out Khadgar, sitting away from the fire with a bucket of water. The mage takes up a towel and cleans himself. Only Lothar is unfamiliar with the unspoken way with which the others deal with the aftermath. He watches the boy. When Khadgar catches him by accident, shame is written in his large, blown eyes, and he shies away.

The younger guard whispers, “We do not talk of it, Sir.”

* * *

Come morning, the camp is surrounded by deep grooves and footprints. The first guard comes back from patrol bloodied, while the older one—a veteran Lothar has fought four battles with—does not come back at all.

“We leave,” Lothar orders. The blood makes his steed nervous.

“I will stay,” says the younger guard.

Lothar scoffs. “You are of no use to us dead.”

The guard smirks, still full of confidence. “Who said anything about dying?” He pulls in the reins and his warhorse bristles. Whoever chases them is going to be in for a fight. “Wait for me at the nearest bridge at nightfall.”

And so starts the dwindling of their company. For that night, the bridge over a stream with no name remains silent but for the torment that is listening to Khadgar's treatment. Every moan is a testament to Lothar's guilt.

The night that follows, their healer does not return and forces Lothar to take over his duties. By his absence, Lothar knows that something still gives them chase.

Khadgar does not look at Lothar when they leave the wagon behind in the forest, spur on their horses and ride like the wind.

Now that he understands what Khadgar has been hiding from him, and why Khadgar did not want Lothar to see what has become of him, Lothar can no longer afford himself to stay out of the mage's sight. Much as he wants to, for unease and tension have settled between them.

He is not sure what it is doing to their friendship.


	6. Pauldrons and Gauntlets

The winding paths of the dying landscape give way to two horses that run as if a nightmare gives them chase.

One black and one white, suppleness and might, they surge through the mountain pass like they have raced it many times, the cloaks of their riders billowing in their haste.

Lothar pushes his stallion faster than he fears the mount can handle. If they make haste, they may reach the tower that looms in the distance before night. It is not a safe haven. He doesn't expect it to be. There are many dangers in Karazhan that he knows of, but he prefers it over the unknown thing that follows them and has already taken two fine guards and a healer.

His hand rests against the stallion's neck. He feels, under layers of steel and leather, how the muscles shift and tense; he can sense the immense power that propels them forward.

Lothar does not need to look over his shoulder to know that Khadgar follows, and that he isn't far behind. His white steed has become unruly and nervous over the last fifteen minutes, like his gryphon had been earlier. It is a matter of minutes now.

But if he rides hard, Lothar can put off the inevitable for a short while longer.

“Lothar,” Khadgar calls out. His voice is thick and falling back into the distance; Lothar's horse relaxes and picks up speed, now that it is no longer burdened by the mage's proximity. Lothar reins it in and brings it to a halt.

The pass in which they come to a standstill is mountainous and without cover. From the ground jut out bony branches of trees closer to death than to life. There is no undergrowth. In these barren surroundings, Khadgar's magic begins to pool around him. Already the glow in his eyes changes from blue to black like the swirling mix of ink in untainted water under a cerulean sky.

In a way it is beautiful. It would be, if Lothar did not know the things he knows. Small pebbles lift from the ground in a radius around the young mage. His affliction is getting stronger. Magic draws from the rocks and the land and curls into Khadgar, and Khadgar is helpless to stop it.

“Lothar,” he breathes again, a nearly venomous hiss, taking support against a rocky wall while panting and grasping his tunic low against his abdomen, the fabric bunching up in his hand and exposing skin, before his knees give in.

Lothar stands faced with the consequences of staving off Khadgar's release.

He steels himself. Then he crouches in front of the mage. His horse remains where it is—which is as far away as it wants to be. The black gelding has no such concerns, were it not that it appears to be aware of its master's state and its ears twitch nervously.

“Sit up,” Lothar tells Khadgar. This close, the energy slips under his skin. Sometimes he thinks that it might literally do so, if his many layers did not prevent almost any skin to skin contact. “I want you to look over my shoulder and tell me if you see anything.” For just because they have gone faster, that which chases them does not feel further away for it.

It also gives his friend something else to focus on.

Putting his sword on the ground where he can reach it easily, he takes off his right gauntlet and closes his eyes. Lothar sets to work. His glove is coarse and anything but pleasant; he can feel enough but not quite sufficiently so. It is functional, he supposes. Less personal.

“Ow,” says Khadgar angrily. His eyes are black when he is angry. “That hurts. Can you not—”

“Eyes on the road,” Lothar is curt to reply, but he tries to adjust the way his hand jerks off the mage. It is dutiful and as considerate as he can make it.

“Nothing to see. What are your gloves made of? Tree bark?”

“It is called leather,” Lothar says between pursed lips. Khadgar can complain all he want. The Light knows he has been doing all the time when not otherwise busy giving Lothar the silent treatment. He forgets that Lothar is not pleased with this arrangement either. They have to make do with what they have; still, Lothar would appreciate it if Khadgar did not take out his frustration and his humiliation on him like this.

Their bickering makes that Khadgar is not even close to the mere idea of ending this in release. That his body twists and thrusts up into Lothar's hand is a perversity; mentally, Khadgar is the farthest thing away from coming.

The problem is that Lothar knows it. His degrading effort aside, Khadgar's anger is preventing himself from proper treatment. The build-up of magic under his skin however keeps growing. At this rate, they are not going to survive the next half an hour unless they do something.

“Not a word of this to anyone,” Lothar warns against Khadgar's shoulder. And he takes off his glove, pointedly spits into the palm, then forces it between their bodies.

Khadgar's body is unbelievably hot to the touch. It is alive with raw energy, the kind that actually seeps into Lothar's skin and leaves his hand tingling. When he shortly looks between them, the veins in his lower arm glow blue. He wonders if that will leave a permanent mark; as it is only Khadgar's colour, it does not threaten him.

It has also knocked the breath out of the mage.

No longer does Khadgar complain. His eyes are back to the purest white, even when he screws them shut so that Lothar does not have to see them. He bites his lip, and his lips are parted in surrender.

“Hey,” Lothar almost doesn't want to speak and he makes it as soft as he can, a whisper against his friend's ear, “eyes on the road.”

Instead Khadgar wraps both arms around Lothar's neck and hides his face against a pauldron.

“Khadgar,” Lothar tries again.

“This is good,” breathes Khadgar. “This is—oh, by the Light, this is—”

The rare praise makes Lothar confident. It is something new to feel an other man's cock in his hand; it is less terrifying when Khadgar appreciates his effort. And so Lothar puts more work into it, making sure to be as firm or as gentle as the mage wants him to be. He cares about doing it right. Lost to the pleasure, Khadgar is not going to keep an eye on their surroundings, and the more responsive he grows, the less and less important it too becomes to Lothar. Desperate whimpers, muted but still there in the way his inhales sometimes stop, breathe against the unforgiving metal of Lothar's armour. It can't be comfortable.

Lothar doesn't know where it comes from. From one moment to the next, he feels the altogether foreign urge to kiss the boy. It is an traitorous impulse, one that he suppresses, and it leaves him horribly confused. It is because of what they do. The way Khadgar responds and encourages Lothar has made the act intimate, and a kiss would not be out of the ordinary in affairs like these.

The way Khadgar clings to him does not help, either.

“Almost—” pants the mage. “Almost—”

When his orgasm bursts between them, the smoke that spills from his body is ice cold. It slithers and escapes through the narrow spaces between them. Although it wanders, Lothar knows by now that it will be back. He allows Khadgar to bury himself against him, and supports him with one hand against the man's back, while his bare one slowly slips out from under the tunic. “Are you okay?”

Khadgar sighs and nods. “Yes.”

It is as if hearing his own words brings him back to reality. The next moment, Khadgar has pulled away from him—if Lothar is not mistaken, his cheeks flush a rosy colour—just before Khadgar claps a hand before his mouth, his eyes wide and boring into Lothar's. “I am so sorry!”

Lothar looks at the discarded glove, and leaves it be. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Oh, Light, Lothar, I have much to be sorry for.” For a long, long time, he holds Lothar's look. Khadgar looks horrified.

It twists Lothar's heart. “There is nothing,” he insists a last time. “Just please tell me we are still alone.”

It takes a moment before Khadgar gets it. Then he looks over Lothar's shoulder. Perhaps he expects nothing, wetting his lips absently and still busy catching his breath, but Lothar can feel him tense the moment before he is dislodged, rolled off to the side. A blast, at least three times more powerful than the last time Khadgar used his lightning, forks into the ground under the mage's hands to create an expanding dome around them.

Safe in its epicentre, Lothar stares at the savage power that surrounds him. Rock is crumbling and any dead wood that comes in contact with the dome is instantly obliterated. It has been a while since he last witnessed magic from the mage's hands, but he can't recall it having been this strong before. The spell is one of primordial destruction itself.

Something unnatural screeches and peters out.

The same sound follows a second later from their other side.

Then once more. And again.

When the spell finally ends—and nearly takes them with it, Khadgar's control over it dangerously slipping while he looks already half ready for his next treatment—and the dome disappears, seven black soot spots surround them.

* * *

“Shades.”

Lothar looks up.

“Shades,” says Khadgar softly. “The things that follow us. Shades. I think there were wards in Stormwind. They could not get to me in the city. I suspect they have been following us since we left the gate.”

Their horses have slowed down to a trot. It would be unsafe to urge them on when the road is so irregular and littered with many a loose rock. Karazhan is no longer a speck on the horizon and night has yet to fall; they will make it.

“I don't think we've seen the last of them,” mutters Khadgar.

“Is it safer to stay outside of Karazhan tonight?” Lothar asks him.

The man smiles wryly. “It isn't safe anywhere. We need magic, but…”

But there is none. Khadgar can't control it, unless it is right after his release. Even then, he might not be strong enough. His control dwindles faster, now that Lothar has taken over the healer's task. It makes Lothar wonder what the healer did that was so effective. He is also afraid to ask.

Khadgar startles him from his thoughts with a soft, “I should apologise. I've been—I've not been nice.”

“Insufferable,” agrees Lothar in an attempt to lighten the mood. He offers Khadgar the waterskin, and watches him drain it. They have already agreed that, the next time Khadgar regains his bearing, he will conjure them up some food. “And I earned that. You don't have to apologise.”

“I refuse to believe that. I am sorry that you're stuck,” and the mage searches for words, ducks his head, “lending me a hand.”

With one awkward apology, he has broken the taboo between them.

Lothar has been thinking of little else. It is not using his bare hand and crossing a boundary that bothers him, for it has made sure that his friend lives, but it is Khadgar's response that leaves him at a loss. He is afraid to bring it up. It scares him to admit how good it feels that Khadgar, who has never needed Lothar's help, has trusted him with something that makes him so vulnerable.

But Lothar also wants to stop feeling confused. And so he laughs and claps a hand on Khadgar's shoulder. “You're going to live, and you're going to come back to Stormwind with me. Now, I think that if there is anything you haven't told me about these shades or how to deal with them, now is the time.”

And Khadgar gratefully starts to talk.


	7. Light and Dark

“Why would anyone willingly build this?”

Lothar stops at the top of the steps and curses not having his gryphon with him to fly him up at least halfway. His hands are on his knees and he takes deep breaths. He does not expect a reply. When he gets one, he wishes he never asked.

“Oh, several reasons actually.” Khadgar looks like he hasn't walked more than three steps, yet he is up ahead of him and perkier than he has been in a long time. “First, this is essentially a mage tower. We study all day. We don't walk or fight, we just sit. So,” he points out, “the steps keep us in shape.”

Lothar wants to strangle the smile off him.

Khadgar doesn't stop there. “It also keeps out warriors wearing full plate.”

He receives an exasperated groan for his cheery explanation.

Lothar can't find it in him to really be too annoyed with the mage though. It has been a while since Khadgar has looked this content. Whether that is because of Karazhan or because the agreement between them might be over soon, it is not the expression of a dying man. To Lothar, everything else is less important. “What do we do now?”

They have reached the top. Leftover pieces of golem too big to move still litter the font. The energy that once flowed here has since dissipated. It is now merely a large circular room bearing the scars of several battles. Why they are here and not down in what is left of the library must be for a reason.

“Give me ten minutes,” Khadgar requests by his side. He holds his chin up well, and Lothar almost misses the hints of how poorly he really fares. “There is an antechamber. In the mean time, Lothar, you should rest. The shades don't usually come out until later. I won't be long. Stay away from the font, just in case.” He has the decency to look embarrassed. “There will be food when I am back.”

And so Lothar is left alone in the large room where he first began to grasp at the enormity of the young mage's strength. When he sits himself against a broken pillar, he regards the basin and remembers the Fel. The demon Sargeras had found its defeat through a devilishly simple trap on Khadgar's behalf, but fighting the Fel itself had been something else.

Lothar had feared having to kill his friend.

Of course, it is strange to be cut off from the boy in a place as dangerous as Karazhan. Should something come to finish the job it started, Lothar would not be able to save the mage. He would likely not even know it until it would be too late.

It is stranger, he thinks, to want to be there when Khadgar touches himself.

The man is not doing well. His malady is returning increasingly faster. Before long, it means that Lothar will have to leave him here, in Karazhan. He does not want to. Maybe it were easier if at least Khadgar was angry with him. He should be, more so than in Stormwind, because friends don't jerk one another off. There are rules. Except this time Khadgar shoulders his burden quietly.

His gaze hooks onto spots on the walls, half crumbled and stained with a black that he invites him to look closer as well as it warns him to stay far away. There is no visible evidence of the Fel, but it is everywhere. The foul magic resides in the brick and mortar of the building. Even the air is thicker here.

Lothar closes his eyes and tries to follow Khadgar's advice. His ears are attuned to his surroundings, picking up any irregularities—and noting the lack of birds or mice—while his body rests.

So he jolts when something crawls over his hand.

A bug, is his first thought. Small and hairy. He opens his eyes to a squint, and finds a spider in the palm of his hand. It is small and non-threatening, and it crawls over Lothar like he is part of the inanimate landscape. Lothar turns over his hand to let it venture along his knuckles and then a finger. In his distraction, he nearly misses the other spiders that have come up to the floor. When he opens his eyes and sits up, a cloud of black disperses.

Something is happening in the tower. He senses the shift. The air, for lack of more than a very basic understanding of the arcane, has become potent. It is sluggish in the same way that a spell is unleashed, a promise of something unnatural about to manifest.

The veins in his right hand start to glow blue.

Before Lothar can grasp the strangeness of that, he finds hairlines of light creeping across the floor towards him. They all come from one door, the crack underneath lighting up.

For a moment he fears for Khadgar.

The lines touch his hand. What follows is a definite sensation of arousal. It is so electric that Lothar does not know what to do with himself. He can't; he can't do anything. Frozen, he backs himself into a corner only to see the broken lines trace back to him and reform the line, linking him magically to whatever Khadgar is doing.

The curse has never done this before. Considering that it is only his right hand, it does not take a genius long to put one and one together. This began when Lothar first touched Khadgar.

The ten minutes since Khadgar's departure have passed a long time ago. Still Lothar sits frozen and waits, his body thrumming with a disconnected, bodiless desire. It is agony. It might only be resolved in a select few ways, and he hopes for the easiest one. Khadgar should not take much longer. If this is what the boy has been going through, being forced to an orgasm if only to breathe freely for a while—subjected to the involuntary whims of a curse that bypasses what he really wants and what he does not—then Lothar's shame increases tenfold.

From the room comes a frustrated cry. The glowing line does not break off.

“Khadgar?” Lothar calls. He curses himself for sounding so affected.

A silence. Then, distraught, “It doesn't work! I don't know what I am doing wrong. It doesn't work!” Khadgar sounds increasingly more hysterical. “I did what I was supposed to do, but I'm not—” When the door opens, Lothar's eyes fall upon a man so suffused with magic that he is barely human any longer. Khadgar is something more. He is losing himself, transcending, but he is also something twisted. His miserable voice, at least, Lothar recognises. “It isn't gone.”

Lothar moves on his own volition. The curse draws him in, sure as day, but he fights its pull. It whispers to him to put out the fire in his own loins. It seduces him to give in and use Khadgar. He won't. He will not bring his friend more hurt than is his fault already.

The moment Lothar's glowing hand touches Khadgar's cheek, the curse discharges and Khadgar slumps forward. He nearly crumbles to the floor, and Lothar rushes to hold him up. His own appetite for the man shrinks back to a sliver.

There is no need to ask. Khadgar is exhausted to the point of unconsciousness, but the black smoke swirls around them from where it has escaped the boy forcefully through his mouth. Khadgar can't stand; can barely breathe. The raw exit has him coughing.

The smoke takes longer than normal to return. It dances across the black stains in the room like it looks for kin. When it has passed every one, it moves back to Khadgar and fuses back into him through his skin. Lothar holds him still. “Better?”

He doesn't know what to do when Khadgar breaks into tears in his arms.

“Not better,” Lothar understands as he does his best to offer comfort. “It won't be long. Tell me what you need and I will make it happen.” His hand strokes through Khadgar's hair and wants to tuck under his chin to make the man look up and—

Lothar screws his eyes shut. “It won't be long,” he repeats in a mantra, for both Khadgar as well as himself. He vows not to sleep until they have discovered a cure. If he has to comfort Khadgar like this once more, reduced to tears and so very fragile, he doesn't think his heart could take it.

* * *

Night at Karazhan is one of the most uncomfortable things Lothar has encountered in his life. It ranks somewhere between that night in the mill, years ago, where the hay had turned out not to be so bugless as he had thought and where he woke up covered in bites; and his nightmares in which the Fel prevails.

There is undeniably an other presence in the room. The spiders reach to the edge of the torch light, impatient, and some of them bigger than ought be. All the while there is the distinct feeling of being watched.

“Was Karazhan like this when you still lived here?” he wonders aloud to the man walking around the room to look for clues. None of the books in Karazhan's library had information on the nature of the shades, and those books are in Stormwind now, useless to them even if there was an article they might have overlooked.

Up on the mezzanine, Khadgar looks through what is left of a few book cabinets. He sounds distracted. “What?”

“What are you looking for?”

Now the mage laughs. He hooks something to his belt, climbs down the ladder and sits down next to Lothar. “A holder,” he says. Despite the bone-deep fatigue, there is a spark of something alive in his bearing. It is absent from the rest of the place; Khadgar is a living soul surrounded by a tower of decay. He has outgrown Karazhan.

Lothar furrows his nose. As per usual, whenever Khadgar starts talking about arcane subjects, he can't keep up with him. “Enlighten me.”

“Well, see.” A scroll case is unhooked and handed over. Golden writings line the outside; something brighter is scribbled inside. “A holder. The curse is bound to magic, see? Arther—the healer—absorbed some of the curse every time it left me. It doesn't do that with you. I think it is because you aren't magical.”

“Thank you.”

Khadgar rolls his eyes. “That means that if we can transfer the curse to something magical, I might be able to bind it.”

“To this?”

Khadgar takes back the scroll case. Lothar sees the bags under his eyes. “Maybe. Or something else. I don't know, we just have to try it and see. Whatever it is, I think it has to be in Karazhan. The curse has been stronger since we got here.”

He looks so hopeful that Lothar doesn't want to point out the elephant in the room.

Only something magical can bind something magically.

Lothar tears off a chunk of bread. He ignores the crumbles that Khadgar still frowns upon as if Karazhan is his home, and hands over a piece. While Khadgar tries to keep something down, he watches him. He is full of energy—the good kind—and he freely offers his companionship to Lothar where he has been angry before. It no longer seems to weigh him down. It is a bit alienating, considering that the change has only come after something that should have ruined their friendship.

Khadgar scrapes his throat. He is slumping, tired, but he doesn't want to sleep. If he would, he said earlier, he is afraid not to wake up. “Can I try something?”

“Hm?”

A hand reaches for Lothar's face. It stops a bare inch away from his skin, Khadgar ponders, and then he touches him. A jolt passes between them. “Huh,” says Khadgar, “I thought so. Odd.” He does it again.

The third time, Lothar grabs hold of his wrist. The feeling is not altogether unpleasant, but Khadgar prodding his face is becoming vexing. “What are you doing?”

That seems to snap Khadgar out of it. “Nothing. I just thought—” But he doesn't finish his sentence. Even in the twilight, Lothar can tell that something confuses him. “I am fairly sure it will work. Binding it. It should.”

Lothar finally groans. “The curse? You can't do magic, Khadgar.”

“I can though, can't I?” The mage sits back on his haunches, unaware that their proximity is closer than usual. He sucks in his lip, lost in thought. Lothar can't imagine Khadgar to be unaware of that which binds them.

It has been there since their skin touched; it is worrisome enough for Lothar to want to lean back and clear his head. But when Khadgar looks up, none of that matters. The mage is losing his grip again. Succumbing. Just like that, only half an hour after they last dealt with it. Either the curse has become stronger, or Khadgar is less resistant. Lothar pities him for the mutiny of his own body.

Khadgar closes his eyes. He looks smaller. “I need your help.”

Tendrils of pure white weave between them. Under his eyelids, the man's eyes are beginning to glow. His countenance refuses to let Lothar go.

“Already?” he asks.

Khadgar's fingertips leave stains of white light against Lothar's wrist when he fidgets to take off the gauntlet. “I rioted it. More control like that,” he whispers. When he looks away, he is so very breakable. “Only one more time. If it works, I won't have to ask this of you ever again.”

Lothar's hand slips under fabric and pushes flat against Khadgar's cock.

Once again, in the only way that the curse is predictable, Khadgar flashes alive. He whimpers, and his eyes fall on Lothar. This time, they don't look away. Lothar watches as pleasure tilts the man's head back and animates the mage's fingers where they are splayed hotly against his neck, crawling for purchase. Each touch burns and soothes Lothar, until the light wraps its warmth around them like a cloak.

Lothar loses himself in the sounds that he draws from the mage.

The last time. Khadgar won't ask this of him again.

“Lothar,” breathes Khadgar. His eyes are blown, his skin aglow with a blackness so dense that it sucks up all the light that Lothar gives off—which is only a reflection of Khadgar's own light. The curse knows what Khadgar is doing, and it is fighting back. But his eyes are his own, and they hold all of Lothar's attention.

Then the man's body is too close, too close for anything else to remain between them.

As soon as their mouths meet, Lothar surrenders willingly.


	8. Ashes

Khadgar is all hands and eagerness. Though the smoke wars inside him, wrapping him in a cloak of black feathers and silk that attempts to smother him, his fingertips draw sustenance from Lothar's skin. Strings of light extend between their figures. Khadgar cups his jaw, climbs further up until he sits in Lothar's lap without the slightest preamble or embarrassment, and clings onto him as if his life depends on it.

It probably does; Lothar isn't sure how much of the kiss is Khadgar and how much is the haze speaking for him. He can't decide for the man. Besides, there are other things to think about.

He accepts every kiss like it is a gift. His gratitude, then, is a hand against Khadgar's burning, roiling skin, and an other that worships him properly. Sometimes, when Khadgar gives him space, he thanks him for it with a slow dance of tongues that encourages Khadgar to more feverish kisses and the nearly obscene way in which he moves. Lothar can't decide for Khadgar, but he knows what the addiction of being infatuated feels like. And he wants so much more than to have it end tonight.

Are they expected to go back to friends from this, he wonders?

Khadgar falters though, and for a second he nearly chokes. If they thought the curse was bad before, it is overpowering him now.

“With me,” Lothar pants. He draws Khadgar's eyes to him again. “You can do this.”

Khadgar fights desperately. He nods and pants, but he is growing fainter.

Much too soon, his eyes flicker out into a black void.

Lothar's hand falters.

From one moment to the next, the body on top of him loses all strength. Like a man with neither bones nor muscle, Khadgar tips forward until his weight is draped against Lothar's chest. There is nothing left of him; it is just black smoke and the smell of decay.

Lothar is helpless. He tries for a few futile moments to kiss him or coax him back alive, but the body remains unresponsive.

One of the last people to mean something to him, Khadgar too has left him. Lothar's view of the cold body blurs. His throat constricts.

It is not supposed to end like this. It can't end like this. Khadgar was supposed to bind the curse and be rid of it. He should have returned to Stormwind, or wherever else. As long as he was alive, Lothar would have been good with everything. The deathly stillness in him now is wrong. If nothing else, he was supposed to go out in a blaze of his own magic. Instead Khadgar's flame has petered out like a candle in a hurricane.

But it isn't Khadgar's own magic that has consumed him. On the floor by the man's feet drips a sickly tar, and the rocky debris, remnants of the many times Karazhan has been battered, is still afloat in the air. There is still the ghost of the energy source up in the font.

When Lothar focuses hard enough, he finds a faint breath.

He feels almost nauseous when he continues jerking off the lifeless body. In apology, he places kisses against the man everywhere. Khadgar's skin remains cold as death. “Stay with me,” he whispers, as if Khadgar is still in there and needs only an anchor to hold onto. “Your place is not among the dead.”

If he sounds desperate, then he feels ten times worse. Lothar does not know what he is doing, because he doesn't know what can be done. As non-magical as ever there was someone, the curse and Khadgar's plans for it are a riddle that he can not comprehend. So he does the only thing he knows to do; he tries to take Khadgar over the edge.

If it won't work, the vileness of this moment will stick with him forever.

Khadgar moves. He has barely any fight in him left, but the motion of fingers trying to grasp his tunic are the best feeling in the world.

“Hey, kid”, Lothar smiles, all tears and relief and affection, and he rolls the limp body onto the ground. There is a chance, which means that he will have to work. Lothar looks up as he hovers above Khadgar's waist. Black-eyed, Khadgar looks back.

“Please forgive me for this.”

Khadgar nods.

Fabric gives way to his hand. Lothar steels himself. Then his tongue flattens against the shaft.

And Khadgar _keens_.

It isn't something Lothar has done before, or finds very pleasant—it is hard to, when Khadgar is cold as frost and doing this now feels like the wrong time and and the wrong place—but he is not one to give up. He takes a breath and swallows. The only encouragement he needs is for Khadgar to blink back to life.

And Khadgar does. His knees come up on either side against Lothar's ears, and his back arches. Black falls off him like a shroud, leaving the brightest familiar blue. Lothar can't help it; his eyes look up. It is a miracle to behold the man now, a wonder of nature, and it fills him with an almost religious awe. He only glances away when Khadgar threatens to look his way.

“When I tell you to,” Khadgar pants, “you get as far away from me as possible.”

Lothar frowns.

But Khadgar insists, between suppressed moans and hitched breaths, “Listen to me. Do as—Lothar, do as I say.”

Suddenly, Lothar is afraid.

" _Anduin._ "

Lothar's eyes snap up. There is so much command in him that it is impossible to withstand it. His free will is but a figment of his imagination; Lothar is at his beck and call.

He nods.

On the floor, Khadgar closes his eyes and smiles. A dewdrop tear traces a path across his cheek to his ear. He gasps and whimpers while a corona of tar tries to find a way back into him on the unforgiving stone. Both of them are beacons of light. Their motion is synchronous, paced, and feverish. Khadgar brings up an arm to muffle himself against the back of his wrist. The other reaches for the scroll case.

“Go!”

Lothar pulls away and runs. It goes against every fibre of his being, to leave the mage to deal with his curse alone, but he has been in the way enough times to know that when it comes to the arcane, Lothar is likely to be a distraction, never an asset. So he runs down the stairs, and he does not stop when he thinks he is far enough. As far away as possible. He has promised Khadgar that much.

The cry that echoes into the night above him finally gives his feet pause.

Then come words with arcane weight. They sound unnaturally enhanced, and not like Khadgar does. Incorporeal. It is the light that fills the cracks that has to assure Lothar that he is still there.

Loose stone is pulverised and subjected to the new center of gravity, grains drifting up towards the tower room. Karazhan shakes on its vestiges. Once mighty, the tower has been reduced to but stone and marble, a maze of empty bookcases and the ruin of Medivh's legacy. It is Khadgar's; and only Khadgar can unmake it.

Lothar prays to whatever is holy that his friend may survive. He runs and runs, and only stops when a loud crack comes from overhead, before utter, permanent silence.

* * *

A morning song of city birds comes in through the open window.

Never the reason for Lothar's early waking, he sits on the bed and ignores the sounds while he breathes in and out, in and out. Only when he feels balanced enough—when he has told himself to act normal enough times that he might this day believe it—does he get up and make his way to the dining hall for breakfast.

Stormwind is an oasis of peace, but Lothar does not feel it. The Lion has returned in a state of turmoil that neither drinking nor continuing with his everyday life and pretending that all is well seems able to soothe.

“Anduin.” Lady Taria nods at him. “Did you sleep well tonight?”

She sits poised where her children are running around the table, waving wooden swords or whatever else they can find to brandish. As always, Lady Taria exudes a peace that Lothar can only aspire to accomplish. She wears a proud smile, and intervenes only when she thinks her children are going too far.

Lothar slouches over the table in the seat next to her.

“I take it you had a rough night then,” she says conversationally.

“Not very.”

In the warm light of approaching spring, her light chuckle makes her look like a sprite. “Well. If you are here for breakfast, you had better hurry, or I'm afraid you will find the kitchens empty.”

Lady Taria does not speak in riddles. The moment the Lothar pushes past the double kitchen doors to find himself something to eat from the pantry, he feels it. His gut wrenches.

Before seeing him, he knows that Khadgar is here.

They both don't know what to say.

Khadgar looks good. He is back in his familiar blue. The colour has come back to his cheeks and his ears. In his hands is a platter filled with fruit, a lump of old cheese and some bread; his appetite has been stronger than it used to be. His body has been through a lot, and Khadgar still needs to fully recover.

He steps aside for Lothar, but he does not advert his eyes. There is something awkward in the way he moves. “Lothar.”

“Boy,” Lothar acknowledges as their bodies skim in passing, and both of them tense up.

Perhaps he says the word on purpose. Perhaps, in an attempt to return to where they once were, Lothar reaches out to old customs. But it isn't working; Khadgar's smile doesn't reach his eyes and he apologises himself in a toe-curlingly polite gesture, and then he is gone from the kitchen, through the doors and undoubtedly back to the library or his room in the tavern. Somewhere where Lothar won't find him.

It's not that Khadgar avoids him. Somehow, the mage finds ways to always run into Lothar. It tends to start out nice, too. Khadgar greets him, and Lothar is reminded of how much he would actually do for this man. A simple gesture from him—a laugh, or even looking full of purpose—can wake a fire in Lothar's chest. And then he invariably says the wrong thing.

Three grapes are all that Lothar brings back from the pantry. He returns to his seat and ignores the look he gets from his sister. When he eats, his thoughts are elsewhere.

Khadgar is alive and no longer ill. In time, he will be fine. He studies, albeit less hours of the day until he has recovered, and he pays his tribute when the priests hold a funeral for the healer assigned to him. The people are happy to have him back. Whereas Lothar, Lothar doesn't know how to ever make up for all the things he has done.

It is not the first time that he feels as if the curse is still between them.


	9. Those who have returned

The day the priests officially declare Khadgar back to full health is the day he talks the Queen into lending him a bird.

Lothar is informed upon his arrival at the stables that his usual gryphon is unavailable. He asks again, expecting to have misheard, and is consequently for the rest of the day ready to throw a fit at whomever saw fit to take his mount. The gryphon is not officially his, his rational mind supplies, but nobody else dares take the bird whom the Lion of Azeroth bonds with; nobody is stupid enough to challenge him like that. So Lothar waits. Hours are nothing for the name that nobody wants to give him.

When a familiar cry in the skies at twilight finally brings an end to his wait, he straightens his spine and prepares himself. Oh, Lothar is ready. He has dealt with enough pent up frustration over the last days to be so very ready. This is going to be a mighty brawl.

The truth, when brown eyes blink back at him from the saddle that Lothar once paid for and commissioned, turns out to be vastly different.

“You!”

Although finding Lothar here takes the rider by surprise, Khadgar does not bother hiding the rush of his joyride. He is flushed cheeks, messy hair and bright eyes. “I have a name,” he points out. He leans himself against the neck of the animal. Lothar's traitorous gryphon nuzzles back at its rider.

“Boy, what—”

The mage manages merriment and disapproval at the same time. “Khadgar, Lothar. It's not very difficult. Guess what?”

“You stole my gryphon?” Lothar deadpans from the pillar against which he has been leaning for the last hour. His arms are crossed and oh, he tries to remain cross with the man.

“The Queen approved of it.” Sliding down the saddle with an ease that is new on him, Khadgar pads up to his company with that glow in his eyes that hasn't been there for a long time. “Well, probably not this one. But I frightened her last time, and I wanted to make it up to her. I didn't think you'd notice. Also,” he admits, “she is very fast.”

Lothar is unimpressed. “The fastest.”

“Does it bother you that I took her?”

To admit as much is to admit defeat. Lothar takes over the care for his gryphon, and treats her to a dead fish that she gobbles up. He soon earns back her affections, and she his fondness in turn. “You are better, then?” he asks without looking away from his mount. “Ready to once again become the Guardian?”

Much to his surprise, Khadgar helps him with the saddle. “In a few days. Have you got plans this evening?”

“Sleeping would be nice.” It actually would be. Most of his nights he spends restlessly awake, but Khadgar does not need to know that.

The mage rolls his eyes. “You can sleep in Goldshire.”

Goldshire? Now Lothar is impressed. “I see. Back for a day, and already willing to test yourself?” Underlying Khadgar's buoyancy, it is obvious that the boy has missed his natural magic. Not the twisted thing the curse made of it, powerful beyond his capacity. Simple, great magic, the kind that belongs to him. “What about the men I need to train?”

“I will return you before dawn.”

“If you've still got it.”

It is meant as a tease, but Lothar wants to take it back as soon as he sees how it hurts Khadgar. The man's smile is flawed. “If you're scared, you only need to say it.”

“Goldshire,” Lothar confirms. And, because he has messed up enough between them lately, he adds, “I should not have said that.”

Khadgar stops at a belt and leans against the gryphon, who lets him. Confused, he stares. Lothar thinks that he should do this more often. Apologise. He quite likes the wordlessness on the mage who never runs out of words. But then Khadgar softens, and Lothar decides that he likes that better still.

“Now?” asks Khadgar.

Night has fallen, and Lothar may have forgotten that while adding fuel to his anger all day. He regards the merry gryphon, who is thrilled to be attended by two, and pats her on the neck. “After we are done with the lady.”

“Of course.” Khadgar takes what he can get.

* * *

To see the mage and all the attention he is given, Lothar feels something akin to pride. The Lion's Pride Inn may have been named in his honour, but its clientele gather around the returned Guardian tonight.

Word has gotten around. Although few know the extent of the curse or how it has been dealt with—the Queen does, and Lothar has unnecessarily made her vow not to tell anyone—they are all aware that they nearly lost their young protector. And so Khadgar accepts offer after offer of wine, downing the liquid with grace and a surprising hardiness, and laughs.

Lothar should feel territorial over his company being snatched from him. He does not.

It has been two weeks since going back up to the top of the tower. After Khadgar had bade him to leave, silence had settled in Karazhan like a stifling blanket. He remembers the ten minutes before Lothar had foregone his promise and gone back. He had counted every second. When Khadgar did not come down, there had only really been the one option.

Broken on the floor was how Lothar found him. His lips were split and bloodied, and his body was so thin, so weightless, that for a moment Lothar had feared the influence of the Fel. Having cursed himself thrice over, he had carried the boy down too many steps and outside the wretched place, there to find that his own steed—the sturdiest of the two—had broken free. With only the gelding at his disposal, Lothar had propped Khadgar into the saddle. He himself had taken the long walk home afoot.

To see Khadgar now, there is no comparison to the shadow the boy had been upon their arrival in Stormwind.

“Why aren't you drinking?” the innkeeper asks after Lothar's out of the ordinary behaviour.

“I am.” His jug is empty, but Lothar drinks in another kind of addiction. One that, as soon as he thinks of it, shames him.

He has no right. To think these thoughts is an insult, for Khadgar never had a say in the matter. Neither of them had; if Lothar had not done the things that cause him to be miserable now, Khadgar would not be here as he tries to reject yet another glass of wine and failing to do so out of politeness and perhaps equal parts gratitude.

So Lothar waits until Khadgar comes back to him. He nods back whenever the boy looks his way. Sometimes he gets a laugh; sometimes it is an expression he cannot read. But as long as Lothar does not talk, he does not push him away. He agrees with that.

They end up in the same room that night. Khadgar insists. The glow of wine draws curls around his voice when he looks up at the wooden beams hatching across the ceiling and he asks Lothar if he would like to see flowers of fire.

“You don't need to prove yourself,” replies Lothar.

“No. I don't.” Khadgar rolls onto his side and looks at him from the other bed. “But I really do owe you an apology. And I haven't thanked you nearly enough.”

“You?”

Khadgar nods. His cheek rustles the pillow. For a man close to being inebriated—Lothar is the first one to admit that his friend's tolerance astounds him—he is also very composed. “I would have been dead if not for you.”

The very admission pains Lothar. His voice breaks. “You would also not have gotten cursed.”

“But you didn't know.”

And just like that, they have gone from celebrating the restoration of Khadgar's title and abilities to the topic they have both been avoiding. A hollow feeling lurches in Lothar's stomach. He had hoped to avoid this moment, possibly forever. “I did terrible things,” he says. “If anyone should say sorry, it is not you.”

“Were they really that terrible?”

Both of them, he realises, are vying for the right to apologise. In that regard, it is likely that Khadgar does not know what he says, and Lothar is sure not to give him time to come to that realisation, lest Khadgar tries to apologise for that too. “I don't want it to change us. Khadgar, please, allow me to apologise.”

Khadgar does not agree. There is fire in his eyes, much like when Lothar had invited himself into their small rescue party the day they left Stormwind and expected not to return. But here they are. “Fine,” he mutters, and turns his back on Lothar. Tugging his cloak around his clothed form rather aggressively, Khadgar makes an angry compact bundle of mage.

Once again, Lothar has done it. It is almost second nature by now. “You don't want me apologising,” he says, confused. He does not understand, but neither is he fine with yet another check on the growing list of things he wants to take back. If their friendship is beyond patching up, then it is what it is. He will it least have fought for it. “So what do you want of me?”

Oddly, Khadgar relaxes. His shoulders are less angular, less tense, and his voice softer. As if Lothar is finally asking the right things. “You figure it out.”

The world shifts, gradually, irrevocably, and comes to a halt.

Lothar dares not hope. He dares not, for all the ways in which misconstruing the wrong thing might ruin what is left of their brittle friendship. But by the Light, he does it anyway.

Too little can be interpret wrongly; Khadgar does not want him to apologise, but he wants something else from him. Lothar feels young and old at the same time. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Just like that, the room in which they lie is a daunting place. He takes a breath. “Very well.”

Khadgar smiles—Lothar knows he does without having to see it. Their disagreement is settled for another day. “Hm,” he murmurs while he nestles into the bed for warmth, tucking the pillow under him, “but do it in the morning. I think I had too much to drink.”

Sleep fails Lothar that night, but not in a bad way.

He watches the sleeping figure and wonders. When he doubts whether this is what he wants, it always takes but one argument to shut himself up. And if he sleeps at all, it is because Khadgar rolls over in his bed at some point and opens his eyes in the dark to watch him in the same way, with question of his own, and Lothar feigns sleep with a pounding heart. He licks his lips when he feels daring, and he is sure he hears Khadgar take in a breath.

So if he sleeps at all, it is by accident; not by design.


	10. Etiquette

_Figure it out_ , Khadgar said.

There is very little to figure out.

Lothar is returned to the training grounds by a mage who regrets every drinking decision made the night before and promptly runs off, green around the gills, as soon as they touch down. Lothar does not see him the rest of the morning, and he has to actually look for him by the time his morning routine at the barracks is done.

Neither in the castle nor in the library, he assumes to find the boy in the inn. But when that too brings him no company, Lothar bites his nails throughout dinner. The guards look at him oddly, for they are not used to their commander being a nervous wreck like this. At long last, Lothar leans over to Taria and murmurs, trying to pass his behaviour off as annoyed, “Have you seen the bookworm?”

“Khadgar?” she asks altogether too knowingly. “I can't say I have. Is something the matter?”

Lothar absently shakes his head and pushes the meat around on his plate.

Dinner drags on while the sky is dotted with stars and the sun takes its leave for the day. Whichever guard he looks at, they seem to be in on a secret that he is unaware of. Lothar has not done anything out of the ordinary, he doesn't think. He just wants to see Khadgar's stupid—

“There you are.”

The boy falls into the empty seat next to Lothar like it was left there for him. He looks at the Queen once for permission, before he utters a quick spell that puts bread on his plate.

“Excuse me?”

“I've been looking all over for you,” Khadgar mentions over breaking his bread. “You're a hard person to track down.”

“Well, don't you have magic for that?”

Lothar plucks off a piece of bread without shame. So while he has been out searching Khadgar, the boy has been looking for him the same way. They must have gone in circles, missing each other by minutes each time. No wonder the guards are smiling like that. Lothar ignores their audience and gives him a smug grin.

The spluttering protest he gets in reply is almost adorable. Khadgar reaches over for the milk. “I'd rather not use spells on you.”

“A little late for that, don't you think?” escapes Lothar's traitorous mouth.

The Queen scrapes her throat, rolls her eyes and glances to her children, then the guards—even if both them and Prince Varian seem to know exactly what is going on—and so Lothar finds himself shut up and forced to eat the rest of his meal in silence, while Khadgar's reply is cut short. But the tone has been set.

* * *

Two days later, everyone knows about Khadgar's shiny new, masterwork gryphon-feather quill and his matching glowing blue ink.

First the priests come to find out. The priests are not so bad; they can keep a secret. But the mages, like Khadgar, do not. The gift is too exquisite, too valuable. Commissioned. The fact that Khadgar shows it off to anyone who wants to see it does not help, either.

It is the villagers who show the most interest in the gift.

By the time the first person outright asks their Guardian as to who is courting him, one warm late winter morning when he is out for a stroll, it is too late for Khadgar to do something about the rumours he has in his pride himself instantiated.

* * *

If Khadgar has picked up a habit of falling asleep on Lothar in public places, Lothar assumes that it is because Lothar's other responsibilities make that when he is free to find him, it is usually after opening hours. If not for Lothar, Khadgar would fall asleep on the table. So there is nothing strange about that.

That is at least the excuse for when it happens in the library. Or the orrery. Or that time when Khadgar sits on his bed and Lothar has sort of talked his way into being allowed into the room to escape the quartermaster who keeps finding him and asking him tedious questions, and it ends with Lothar wide awake and Khadgar asleep with his head on his lap and his face tilted a rather embarrassing direction.

There is no excuse when the same thing happens after Khadgar seeks him out and they both wake in Lothar's bed, limbs tangled.

Neither of them make a fuss. _Figure it out_ , said Khadgar. Lothar thinks he is getting the hang of that.

* * *

It is the day Khadgar holes himself up with the priests for a full day, and Lothar hastens to the temple mid-training as soon as he hears about it from a young messenger who expects to be paid for bringing bad news; when he abandons anything and everything without needing to think twice, that things come to a standstill.

“What is wrong?” he demands. Nobody can restrain him this time. They should not even try. He pushes past the sorry priest who attempts in vain to keep him out, and into the temple. Three novices tag behind him to try and make him leave. “Where is he?”

In the soft golden light that filters in from the opening overhead, Khadgar's blue is easy to pick out. Startled by the commotion, he pulls up his cloak from where it has been pushed down one shoulder. But he is not fast enough to hide the black stain, nor that it is big and that it moves. Large, shaken eyes stare back at Lothar.

“Let me see it,” Lothar says.

“It is nothing.”

“Then let me see it. Is it the curse?” Lothar's hand hovers over the collar, while he knows he will not force Khadgar to show it if he doesn't want him to. They are both equally afraid. “Is it back?”

Khadgar looks so helpless, his shoulders slack and a choir of priests ready to assess him as soon as Lothar gives them the chance to, that he pulls the mage close and does not let go. Hidden against his chest, Khadgar admits, “I don't know. I woke up and it was there. If it—I can't do it again if it is the curse.”

“We know how to stop it,” Lothar tries to reassure him. In reality, the ground is crumbling under his feet. “If it is what it is, you let me help you.”

But Khadgar shakes his head. “I can't ask you to go through that again.”

“Sir,” interjects a priest; he stands ignored.

“You'd have me sit on the sidelines while someone else touches you?”

“I…no, I—”

“Lord Commander,” an other priest insists.

When Lothar grants them a second of attention, he notices how awkward the lot of them are standing there. Although a priest from these ranks was first selected to deal with Khadgar's curse, they appear greatly discomforted, their eyes returning time and again to Lothar's hand on Khadgar's cheek.

The eldest of the men walks forward. He raises his hand in a kind gesture. “Please let us do what the Guardian came to us for. We will send you a messenger bird every hour if you request it, but the longer you are here, the longer you keep us from treating him.”

Lothar tenses up. " _Treating_ him?"

“Analysis,” the elder priest corrects himself. “If we have no choice but to actually treat him, we will send for you.”

His eyes are kind and offer compassion. He understands the thing that is is in the process of being formed between Lothar and Khadgar, just like he knows how frail that bond still is. Whether or not he condones it, when Lothar reluctantly lets the elder priest walk him out, it is with great consideration to both.

The elder priest makes good on his promise. Every thirty minutes, a crow lands in the window of Lothar's chambers. Magic, Lothar thinks after the third animal, might have been more efficient. But the temple is not far and the crow's delay not over a minute, and he can appreciate not being reminded of spells more than already occupies his mind today.

Three unwrapped strips of parchment, formal and objective as they are, have wound Lothar's nerves tight. The fourth message makes him wait. At forty-five minutes, he is ready to storm in and demand to see his friend himself. It is for Khadgar's sake, not the priests, that he does not.

An hour.

Eighty minutes.

At eighty-three, the fourth crow brings its message and Lothar is wound so tight that when he is delivered, he feels like he could cry. _It is under control_ , reads the slip in his hand. _You may see him._

People have crowded outside the temple when he returns. Word, when it deals with one of the people's favourite public figures, gets around. Lothar doesn't bother to hide how distressing the ordeal has been for him, himself. The city talks regardless of his actions.

Solid oaken temple doors bide him entrance and blissfully shut out everyone else. Cut off from so many questions, none of which he has an answer for, his thoughts are focused for one man. Taking large strides to the dais, he finds Khadgar standing in the holy font like a treasure in a sea of liquid gold.

“It's good.” Khadgar is both shaken and tired, but his eyes are wet with happy tears. “We got all of it out. For good. We made sure.”

Lothar searches him with his eyes. “How did it happen?” he asks. He means to ask him other things; he wants to kiss this man, to touch him and to make sure that the curse is truly and finally gone; and after that, Lothar wants to kiss him for other reasons entirely. Relief mingles with a need for physical affirmation. It shows.

Blue light draws up in a bubble around them. “Hold your breath,” breathes Khadgar. The priests understand too late what is happening, and four of them start towards them. Khadgar is not ready to leave the temple, they say. He needs his rest. He needs—

Lothar's stomach lurches.

Khadgar's magic flares out, and yet he is still breathless. They are in his room in the castle. Khadgar laughs at the rush, at the exhilaration, and he looks as if he wants to sink into the bed and just lie there and at the ceiling for hours. Marvelling in that he lives. He is beautiful in every way, and was nearly lost to Lothar a second time.

“Just to get this clear”, says he, “I would not have allowed anyone who wasn't you.” And then he just stands there, watching Lothar, waiting for something.

Lothar steps to the edge of the man's space. It is impossible to look away. “So what do you want from me?” he asks again. This time he knows the answer before it comes. He does not need to hear it. Although Khadgar does open his mouth to give him an honest answer, Lothar steals the words while they are on his lips.

The circumstances are different. The way they kiss, Lothar finds, is not. Lothar means to go slow to give Khadgar the chance to say no. A formality. Then, he intends to spoil him like a prince. He wants to know what makes the man laugh and what makes him moan. He wants to ease himself into this; although he can't speak for Khadgar, falling for a man is new to him. He wants to not rush anything.

But Khadgar has him on his back on the bed so fast that it isn't even funny. His knees on either side of Lothar, he kisses him with a passion that Lothar doesn't think is fuelled by his relief over the curse or that neither of them is pulling back. The way Khadgar kisses is intrinsically _him_.

He pants when they pull away. For a long while, he doesn't know what to say because, Lothar suspects, there are too many things to say. The boy is breathless; watching him, Lothar doesn't fare much better. “I should,” he mumbles, “oh, Light, I should rest. I think. I don't want to rest.”

Lothar sees only now just how close Khadgar is to crashing. It was lost on them when there were more important things to think about, but whatever the priests have done to him, it has been exhausting. Lothar draws him down into the sheets. He is captured by the simple pleasure of the sight of Khadgar atop bedlinen, more a mirage than someone real. Unfathomable, almost. “Do you want me to stay?” He hopes for a yes.

Khadgar steals another kiss.

It is enough of an answer for now.


	11. Morning

Sneaking around the castle becomes a new routine.

Lothar will wait until the librarian has gone, before finding Khadgar hidden behind a stack of books in the dark of the great library. There he claims a kiss. And sometimes, from the other side of the breakfast table, Khadgar practically undresses him with his eyes alone when he knows Taria is not looking.

For all the moments they sneak in—moments that ought to last longer, moments in which Lothar feels unbridled—they break apart as soon as they think someone is close by.

Khadgar, Lothar thinks, fears the Council and the people for what they might think of this. For Lothar, his concerns are far more mundane; he is convinced that his sister will quite literally have him skinned alive. Perhaps, if she is in a good mood, she might send him on a faraway campaign to cool down. Whether for corrupting the Guardian or for distracting him from his studies, or even for wanting someone who is so much younger, she will find a way.

But it is not like nobody knows.

When Lothar is late for practice, they check Khadgar's room before his own. Considering that they have yet make it to sleepovers, those times makes Khadgar highly uncomfortable. Lothar needs no more than a glance to know that it has happened again. It is worse than when Khadgar is requested to make an appearance or arrange for some magical fireworks and they look to Lothar for agreement first, as if Lothar has any control over what the mage does or does not do. He never had.

So for their secrecy, Lothar grows accustomed to sparse and hidden displays of affection, more often than not without a word uttered between them and never about what this _is_. He grows used to the gnawing insecurity that perhaps this is really nothing, or that surely he is doing something wrong. When his day has not worn him out well enough, it is that thought that keeps his sleep at bay.

Which is why Lothar can only sit there, rooted to the spot at a particularly crowded hour in the Gilded Rose, where the mage has been in the corner poring over a few books about curses—his newest field of research—and where Lothar has joined him just to spend some time with him under the pretence of having a beer, when Khadgar leans over and pecks him on the lips.

Several people stop to stare at the Guardian, much in the same way that Lothar does. His ale, recently filled, threatens to tip over. Khadgar is red to the cheeks but smiling equally in mischief when he holds the beer up with two hands.

“Khad…”

The boy bites his lip. “I wanted to.” He is nervous where he has never been nervous about kissing Lothar before. The gesture is only visible for someone trained in reading him; Khadgar is cringing. As if he might have broken an unspoken rule.

Lothar blocks out whatever audience they may have. He puts his beer on the table. A hundred times less brave than the man next to him in the booth, he gathers his courage before kissing Khadgar on the cheek, too long to be platonic, and then whispers in his ear, “You aren't playing fair.”

His chest swells with accomplishment when Khadgar ducks his head, but then it sinks when he hears a soft, “Sorry.”

Khadgar is sorry. For kissing him where others can see; for not hiding something that Lothar has never wanted to hide in the first place—with the notable exception of perhaps his sister and her protectiveness of the mage—and he understands, there and then, that they may have both merely tolerated the secrecy for the sake of the other.

“I am done hiding,” says Lothar, and kisses him properly.

It is, compared to most of their kisses, a rather tame one. Lothar captures his lips in neither a butterfly kiss nor a passionate exchange of the kind that tends to leave them breathless. It is just the right amount to get the message across, plain and without any room for doubt. He wants him, and he wants more. But he is not going to turn it into a spectacle for the city to see. Khadgar deserves more than that. “My chambers. As swiftly as you can make it there.”

It is Khadgar's turn to close his mouth. Lothar could kiss him again for just how he lights up when he understands.

For the sake of decorum, he takes his beer and returns it to the counter with a slowness that belies how badly he wants to get out. He knows that the eyes of several are following him. Most of them are confused. The others, the others are drawn to the blue light that blows up into a bubble quite recklessly in the middle of the inn. Lothar wonders absently if the lack of needing runes is a new skill, or if perhaps Khadgar has already drawn them faster than he used to before.

As soon as that light will zap out, Lothar knows that the story will spread. He does not stay long enough to confirm it.

* * *

Instead of in his chambers, Lothar finds Khadgar standing awkwardly in front of his door. He smiles nervously at anyone who passes him by, and the guard at the corner of the hallway has been eyeing him suspiciously.

Lothar slinks into the shadows. For a minute, he simply watches. Nothing is more magical than this, and also nothing is more awful for his already frazzled nerves.

The relief on Khadgar's face when he sees him soothes every bit of that.

“Lothar.”

“You are not inside.”

“I—well—it seemed presumptuous, and I wasn't sure…”

So that means that all of the castle is now aware of them. Lothar shakes his head with a smile. “Still?”

“Well.”

But for how clumsy the mage appears, Lothar knows they are both on the same page. They want the same thing. Khadgar's eyes are a bit bigger, his lips parted, and his hands make fists in his robes. Lothar does not need to speak for Khadgar to edge his way back against the door, reach for the handle and grant them entrance.

Then they are alone.

All at once, Lothar presses him up against the wood. His mouth is as possessive as it is everywhere. Come morning, all of Stormwind will know that this man has his heart. It only amplifies Lothar's need to make sure now that Khadgar knows it before everyone else does.

Khadgar gives as good as he gets. He knows exactly what he wants, and he takes it easily. When he gasps, he tangles a hand in Lothar's hair. Lothar's mouth he guides to where he wants it. And oh, Khadgar's response when he is given what he asks for is generous. For him to want a man like Lothar, a battle-hardened widower with enough years behind his name to almost be the age of a father, is heady.

Lothar takes the man's hand and pulls him away from the door. They don't need words to tell each other where they are going. Fingertips press into handpalms. When he sits on the edge of the bed, Khadgar crawls on top of him.

All of it is breathtaking.

It is the warm hand under his shirt, and a mouth drawing pleasure from that forgotten spot on his neck; it is Khadgar pleading against his skin to be his and for him to be Lothar's. To be what they have been for some time, but to acknowledge it. To cease hiding. It is giving voice to that feeling of not knowing what to do if either of them were to disappear, and assuring themselves that they are here, in this room; not going anywhere if not together.

Come morning, Lothar's lips are swollen and inexplicably raw; their clothes, crumpled at the edge of the bed, quite ruined.

He will remember the way Khadgar's magic has not flared up. To have given him pleasure until he couldn't take more and not to see a cloud of black smoke force itself out of khadgar's body. Khadgar's body had curled, so willingly, not because of a curse. They are gifts he values beyond comprehension.

Lothar's soldiers are undoubtedly going to embarrass their commander. He wonders if they will congratulate him or if it is going to be all morning innuendo for him. But, glancing at Khadgar being a sleeping mess under the sheets, Lothar knows he will only be a proud and very much smitten sod for it.

“I have to go,” he whispers against Khadgar's ear, if only to steal a kiss to sate what cannot be sated. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

“M'kay,” murmurs Khadgar, who is wonderfully pliant for a change as he pecks him on the cheek and closes his eyes. The sight of him comfortable under and around Lothar's sheets makes Lothar want to call it a day. “With the Queen?”

“If you want.”

Khadgar chuckles sleepily. “You would have to behave.”

“Let's do that some other day.”

“Let's,” agrees Khadgar. “I don't want you behaving tonight.”

And oh, Lothar does not know how he has been able to be nothing but friends with this man for so long. Thinking what he thinks right now, it feels impossible to have ever not found him enchanting. To think of him as no more than a boy is an insult.

Khadgar is the farthest thing from what Lothar once expected to find in a partner. In the faint light before dawn, he is a warm shadow occupying the space where he belongs. He is nobody's property, yet he is here willingly. “I am borrowing your pin,” Lothar says against Khadgar's cheek. He wants to tell the world, but he wants to do it respectfully. “Use one of mine.”

He gives an opening. Khadgar uses it to pull him back on top of him. He shamelessly brings up his naked legs around Lothar's clothed form; there are no complaints about coarse leather or the weight of his boots. A thumb ghosts over Lothar's lip. When Khadgar looks up, he is awake and serious. “Keep it.”

* * *

For the first time in years, the Lion of Azeroth is late for practice.

But then nobody really expects him to be on time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! Thank you, everyone who decided to stick with me until the end. I planned to make this porn with heaps of plot, but as you can see, it got a life of its own. Every comment has encouraged me to write faster, get a new chapter in sooner. ~~So, there might be some edits in a few chapters in the future where I should have probably betaed a bit more (writing on your phone with autocorrect sometimes gets you funky things when you don't pay attention) 8D Well.~~ (As of 2016-08-10, smoothed that right out.)
> 
> So grateful to have had your audience <3  
> BlueMonkey


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